A Reverse de la Riva Guard Tutorial

The de la Riva guard is an open guard position in which you entangle one of your opponent’s legs with your own leg. It was popularised years ago by Ricardo de la Riva, and has since become a staple of gi and no gi jiu-jitsu.

But a related position, the Reverse de la Riva guard, is still a mystery to many grapplers…

I was recently in Toronto, Ontario for 24 hours, but found the time to meet up with my friend Ostap Manastyrski. Ostap is a highly technical and highly decorated competitor, who uses the reverse de la Riva guard all the time.

And we filmed a short tutorial on this powerful guard position that you might enjoy.

Even if you don’t use the spinning-through-the-legs-to-take-the-back move from there you can still use it to shut down the cross knee slide, which is definitely one of the top three guard passes used in high level BJJ competition.